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l.7 ��r��-� - �� . J . J J 1 REQUEST FOR CITY COUNCIL DISCUSSION Agenda Date: OS/11/2015 Agenda Item: 8.e City Manager Approval Item Description: Request by the Community Development to hire Sambatek as the Consultant to Draft Amendments to the Existing Tree Preservation and Replacement Regulations and New Planned Unit Development Regulations. FORESTER CONSULTANT Over the past year, the Community Development Department and City Council have been discussing possible Zoning Code updates for tree preservation as well as investigating how to have development reviews performed by a trained and certified forester. The tree preservation updating and development review was initially tied to the hiring of a new City Forester. Since the City Forester hiring process was not successful at this time, Staff is proposing to contract with a forestry consultant to handle the ordinance preparation and development review/monitoring tasks. This approach has been successful in nearby communities. When Staff was seeking out qualified firms, both multi-disciplinary firms and forestry — specific firms were contacted. That process identified that the forestry only firms were generally not comfortable with ordinance writing and the multi-disciplinary firms were comfortable with ordinance writing, but typically had a forestry firm that they teamed with far the technical expertise. At the beginning of Apri12015, the City Planner narrowed this initial search to 5 consulting iirms to discuss assisting the Community Development Department with amending the existing Code. These firms included Westwood Professional Services, SRF Consulting Group, HKGI, Sambatek, and WSB. These firms were selected because they had a background in both ordinance writing and forestry. Westwood declined to interview because they specialize in private sector development work rather than municipal and HKGI declined to interview because the scope of the work was too small for their usual business. On April 9 and 10, 2015, the Planning Division interviewed 3 of the 5 consulting teams to further determine which firms possessed the knowledge and background necessary to provide an adequate proposal. Upon completion of the interviews, the City Planner, Senior Planner, and Community Development Director determined that SRF Consulting Group and Sambatek were the teams with the best knowledge and background to complete the two projects. WSB was eliminated from further consideration. On April 14, the City Planner requested proposals from SRF and Sambatek, and on Apri120, the City Planner received the two proposals for further analysis. On April 24, 2015, the City Planner and Community Development Director completed their analysis and discussion regarding each of the proposals and selected Sambatek as the consultant team best suited to complete both desired tasks. As part of the process, it was also eXplained that the City would be entering into a separate contract with the winning team's forester (S & S Tree Specialists) for completing the RCA CodeAmendmentConsultant 050415.doc Page 1 of 2